How distinct the least important words of this conversation have
remained in my memory with their gay or sad, sentimental or bantering,
disabused or tender intonation! I could continue to note down pages and
pages of details without weariness. It seems to me, while writing this
upon cold mute paper, that the clock has gone backwards and it is once
more the time when the conversation ended, too soon for my liking, and
we reached the house in the Rue de la Barouillére. I can see myself
saying good-bye to Camille before the massive door which a sleepy porter
was very slow in opening. I think I can hear the sound of the bell and
feel the warmth of her little feverish hand in mine, while I wished her
good-bye and she appeared to me, in the light of the moon, like an
adorable phantom ever disappearing. She half closes her fine eyes which
were heavy with sleep, she bows her head with a smile, she puts her
finger to her mouth with a malicious gesture, to remind me to be
discreet over the confidences she had entrusted to me. Her little head
and long cloak disappeared in the darkness and the door closed with a
dull sound.
Unconsciously I listened for a moment longer. I stretched out my hand to
clasp hers and felt instead a metal object, the lamp which was left for
her every evening. A match was struck, a hasty step sounded, and another
door, the staircase door, closed. That was all, so I went towards home
in the pale moonlight along streets deserted except for a few stray cats
and dogs, a few policemen on their beats, a belated cab, and a group of
young artists just leaving a café in the Boulevard Saint Michel, which
were the only things which testified to the existence of life in the
great sleeping mansions, dark convents, the little houses with a single
jet of gas burning, and the black, sinister-looking hospitals. This
quarter is really one of the suburbs of Paris, though it is so near the
densely populated Boulevards, just as Camille’s peaceful life with her
mother is so near her passionate stage life.
It had only taken us three quarters of an hour to return from the
theatre, though our pace was unequal, sometimes slow and sometimes
rapid, as if we were hastening over our confidences. It took me less
time to reach the little house on the Boulevard des Invalides where I
live, though I wandered aimlessly in this deserted part overwhelmed by a
trouble for which I could scarcely blame myself. That sudden burning of
the inner being, that handling and interminable repetition of phrases
which one has just heard, that obsession of thought at the same time
pleasing and terrifying, that occupation as if by force by a creature to
whom one was the previous evening and the same day a perfect
stranger—these are the signs which denote the fatal fever, malaria of
the soul, which takes longer to cure than other and more dangerous
maladies.
“A good night’s sleep,” I said to myself, “and to-morrow these foolish
ideas will be gone; besides she is a friend’s mistress. I know myself.
The thought of their caresses simply would prevent me from becoming
amorous of her, if I desired to. But I shall not have this desire. She
has moved me this evening in her real life as she moved me at the
theatre, as she would have moved me in a novel. But that is pure
imagination. To-morrow I shall not think of her, and if I think of her,
I shall not see her nor Molan again. That is all.”
Pure imagination is an expression easily used. But is there not a
profound and very sensible point by which this imagination touches our
heart, is our heart in fact? When a woman’s grace has wounded this
point, we always discover motives why we should not remain faithful to
the prudent programme of not seeing her again. The fact was, I began by
not having the good night’s sleep I promised myself, and when I awakened
from my morning doze I thought of Camille Favier with as much troubled
interest as I had done the evening before. I at once found a pretext for
breaking my good resolution not to see either her or Molan again. Had I
not promised Jacques to inform him as to the success or otherwise of his
scheme? All the same, it was not without remorse that about ten o’clock
I set out to fulfil my strange mission.
I had forgotten the previous evening that I had a model coming at ten. A
girl called Malvina came to pose for my never-ending “Psyché pardonnée.”
When I sent her away I heard the little inner voice, of which on the
previous evening Camille had prettily spoken, whisper: “Coward! Coward!”
But even without the little voice, did not the presence of this creature
demonstrate to me the absurdity of my incipient sentiment? Malvina had,
too, like Camille, the ideal head for the primitive Madonna, and she was
pleasure personified. Her mouth, which looked so beautiful in its silent
smile, only opened to retail obscenity. What a good plan it is never to
believe in the bewitching charm of a face! Fate has warnings like this
for us which we disregard with an obscure feeling of the irreparable.
After Malvina had gone I looked round my studio, at the unfinished
canvas, my colour box, my palette, and I went out pursued by their mute
reproach. Why did I not listen!
To reach the Rue Delaborde, where Jacques Molan lived, I had fortunately
to traverse a nice part of Paris, of the sort to distract my attention.
I know it so well from making numerous studies of it when I was
preoccupied, as the critics say when they are looking on our pictures
for an opportunity to theorize and be modern. That is finished as far as
I am concerned. It has profited me all the same; for if I no longer
think a picture ought to represent freaks of light without significance,
or bodies of human life without essential value, I have kept for these
studies a keener taste, a more refined sense of certain landscapes,
those of the Seine, for example, the Tuileries, and the Place de la
Concorde. I love them especially in their morning tints which give them
a tender freshness, distinct water-colour transparencies, with a thrill
of alert activity. That morning, though my nerves were still quivering
with the intoxication of my new-born passion, the water of the river
seemed to me fresher than ever; the grey-blue of the sky more delicate
above the leafless trees; the water of the fountains more sparkling with
a whiter and more noisy foam. My over-excited being more readily
appreciated the charm of the trees, houses, and flowing water. I
unconsciously forgot my wise resolution and my remorse at leaving my
work, to picture to myself the renewal of the soul which a liaison such
as the one satiated Jacques Molan held so cheaply would instil into me.
Then the irresistible demon of irony took possession of me.
“Yes,” I actually or almost said to myself, “what a dream it would be to
be loved by a woman like Camille! Just free enough to give long hours to
her lover and not free enough to absorb his time; enough of an artist to
understand the most delicate and subtle shades of impression; natural
enough to be amused at the Bohemian caprices, which are so savoury when
they are not accompanied by misery; enthusiastic enough for a constant
encouragement to work to emanate from her, and too spontaneous, too
sincere to ever drive you to that slavery to success, which is the fatal
influence of so many mistresses and wives. And then what an adorable
lover she would be! Was it a rare tint of soul, which the story she told
me yesterday had, and was it different from the ones in the heads of her
little friends? A rich protector and much advertisement is the usual
ideal of such girls! The only actress who thinks differently must needs
meet with Molan, the cold machine for producing prolific copy. But what
is the use of my understanding and appreciating her like this, when I am
on my way to contribute to the closeness of their intimacy? What absurd
chance made me meet Jacques yesterday evening? That must happen to me:
it is the symbol of our whole lives, his and mine. I am, or rather am
ready to be, the man who really loves; he is the lover. I have the
sensibility of a real artist, while he achieves works and reaps the
glory of them. Meanwhile I am wasting a very clear morning and my
picture is at a standstill. Ah, I shall soon be back and I will send for
Malvina. I will work all the afternoon, I will make up for lost time.
Directly my commission is executed I will hurry away. I am rather
curious to see how the animal is lodged. He must be making just now from
80,000 to 100,000 francs a year, and it is a great change from his
former position.”
It was a long time since I had called upon my old friend. While the
lift-man whisked me up to the second floor, where he lived, of a large
new house with bow windows of coloured glass, I recalled the numerous
quarters where I had known this author, who was such a clever
administrator of his wealth and talents, and ran over in my mind his
rapid advance along the highway of Parisan glory. First of all on
leaving college he had a little furnished room in the Rue Monsieur le
Prince. A portrait of Baudelaire by Félicien Rops and a few bad
medallions by David constituted the personal furniture of this retreat.
The fastidious arrangement of the books, papers and pens on the table
already testified to the worker’s strong will.
Jacques’ only resource then was a small income of 150 francs a month
allowed him by his only relative, an old grandmother, who lived in the
Provinces, and to whom he behaved like a grateful grandson. I saw him
weep real tears when she died, and then he put her into a book. Strange
to say, that was the only one of his books which was really bad. Could
it be that talent of writing is only nourished by imaginative
sensibility, which, to be realized, has need of expression, whereas real
sensibility exhausts itself and comes to an end through its own reality?
Happily for him, in the early years of his literary life he only
depicted sentiments which he had not. His first volume, so elegant and
yet so brutal, was, strange to say, scrawled in this Latin Quarter
garret. His joining the staff of a Boulevard paper and a change of
residence showed that the writer did not intend to vegetate in the same
narrow circle. He took rooms in the Rue de Bellechasse still on the left
bank of the river, but now very close to the right bank. The portrait of
Baudelaire still remained, to proclaim his fidelity to his early
artistic convictions; but now it was framed in velvet and hung upon red
Adrianople tapestry, which gave to this retreat an air of a padded
shelter. This counter-balanced the lack of artistic character in the
furniture, which was on the hire system and very solid and commonplace,
without any other pretension than the quality of its old oak. The noted
trader in literary wares, which Molan was, betrayed himself by his
choice of durable furniture and a well made desk never likely to need
repair. His success still increased, and the period of the little house
at Passy came, though directly afterwards the house became unsuitable.
Jacques had not been there eighteen months when the opulent and final
abode of the successful man took its place. The anteroom where I was
received by a little page in livery was sufficient to convince me. A
commissionaire, whom I seemed to have seen stationed in my own
neighbourhood, was in attendance. I was shown into a large smoking-room
which adjoined a small study and contained a case full of rare curios,
consisting of old Chinese lacquer-work, admirable sixteenth century
bronzes, polished boxes, statuettes from Saxony, and old sweetmeat
boxes. The dissimilarity of the objects expressed Molan’s utilitarian
ideas. He studied the possibility of sale in case of misfortune. A few
pictures decorated the walls, but they were all modern with the most
excessive and extravagant modernity. Paintings by an obscure
contemporary sometimes turn out a good investment, for he may be a
Millet or a Corot. It is a ticket in a lottery, but the prize is a good
one. Molan bought these pictures for a few pounds from young painters in
distress, and received them as a return for a little advertisement.
But it was necessary to know him as I knew him to understand the use of
this smoking-room, which was destined by the fashionable author for
show, for interviews and receptions. Its significant feature was order,
implacable, studied and fastidious order. Everything displayed this
order, but most of all the arrangement of the books on the book-shelves.
The books themselves were all the work of young colleagues, who would be
flattered by seeing their works bound in colours appropriate to their
talents, the colourists in red, the elegists in mauve, and the stylists
in Japanese paper. The brilliant new silver articles, the freshness of
the Havanna carpet and many other little things showed the eye of a
master difficult to please, whose wishes extended to the smallest detail
without ever being satisfied. The conversation that the author had with
me the previous evening concerning his investments came back to my mind,
and I thought he had told me the truth. He himself entered, manicured,
shaved, with keen eyes, a fresh colour, and wearing the most delightful
lounge coat that ever a tailor of genius had made for a man about town.
He had in his hand a quill pen which he showed me before throwing it
into the fire, saying—
“Have I kept you waiting? I had to finish my third page. If I do one
page more by half-past twelve I shall have done my day’s work. Four
pages a day, whether it is a novel or a play, is my method,” and
pointing out to me a long row of books not so tastefully bound as the
others: “And that is the result.”
“Can you leave and resume your work when you please?” I asked him.
“When I like. It is force of habit, you see. I have regulated my brain
as a gas meter is regulated. Does the comparison scandalize you? You
have, as I have done, meditated upon these words of a great master:
'Patience is that which in man most resembles the proceeding which
nature employs in her creations.’ Almost automatic regularity is the
secret of talent! But let us talk of your errand last evening to
Camille. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, was there not?”
“Not at all,” I replied, rather pleased at being able to disconcert his
fatuity; “she did not even question me in order not to make me tell
lies.”
“Yes,” he said with a shrug of the shoulders, “that delicacy is just
like her. We live in an amusing time. You meet with a woman of exquisite
sentiment, and a delightfully fine heart. She turns out to be a poor
little actress. Another woman with an income of 200,000 francs, coming
of a good family, bearing a famous name, beautiful, and with a position
in society, is a bad actress. But if the little one is romantic, she is
shrewdly romantic. She had scruples about making you speak, so as not to
ask you to betray a friend. Then she turned to the right place to learn
the truth. She sent an express message to Fomberteau this morning.”
“Did you not foresee that?”
“I reckoned on calling upon her when I went out. She was too quick for
me. Fomberteau sent her this reply,” and he took a piece of paper from
his pocket. “Imagine Camille as she read this”—
“'Dear friend, I had no duel to fight. Your Jacques therefore was not my
second. Except that, all the rest is true. Set your mind at rest
regarding both of us, and as it is press day please excuse me from
coming in person to thank you for your kind anxiety.’ To this Camille
has added a postscript: 'As you gave me an explanation yesterday which
was not true, I have the right to another one, the true one, and I am
waiting for it.’”
“What time did you get this letter?” I asked him.
“About twenty-five minutes ago. The messenger is waiting. I wanted to
see you and know what she said to you. She has lost nothing by waiting.
I am going to reply to her in my best style.”
“I should be curious,” I said, “to know by what new scheme you will
excuse yourself.”
“I!” he replied as he sat down at a little table and began to write, “by
none. I am telling her that I have not the least explanation to give
her, and I do not wish her to allow herself another time to play tricks
upon me as she did when she sent to Fomberteau.”
“You will not do that,” I interrupted him quickly. “The poor girl loves
you with all her heart. She could not bear the doubt. She thought you
were lying to her and she wanted to know the truth. Come, is not that
natural? Had she not the right? Be just. It is so simple to find another
excuse. Rather tell her the truth as she asks for it; it will, too, be
less trouble.”
“There is only one slight objection,” Jacques replied as he fastened the
note, rang the electric bell to summon the messenger, and gave it to
him, “and it is that I should be perfectly happy if Camille quarrelled
with me. That is, too, another principle as absolute as the regularity
of work. When a man wishes to break with his mistress, the more
insignificant the motive the better. My progress is so good in the other
direction that I don’t need her any longer to urge on her rival. As you
are my 'beater,’ and I know that you are as silent as a tomb, I will
tell you everything in spite of those noble phrases about discretion,
more especially as up to the present this confidence only compromises
me. Last evening I obtained an appointment from Madam de Bonnivet. You
would never guess the place though, not in a thousand times. At Pére
Lachaise, before the tomb of Musset like the other girl. You don’t think
that is very grand, do you? From the cemetery to the carriage is like
the sublime to the ridiculous, and it is only one step, and from the
carriage to a place of my acquaintance is the programme and only another
step. For you know one never ought to take a woman to one’s own home.
Under these circumstances Camille quarrels with me, so much the better!
But don’t look at me as if you would like to say: 'My dear Molan, you
are a monster.’”
If I had still doubted the keen sentiment inspired in me by the charming
Camille, the doubt would have been swept away by the cruel emotion I
experienced at this cynical speech. I could see the reality of the drama
in which I was concerned as a witness; as in some duels the sight of a
life very dear to him in danger makes the second paler than the
duellist, Little Favier’s passionate love served Jacques as an attack
upon the vanity of the _blasé_ woman of the world who was coquettish and
coldly perverse without doubt, but also elegant, envied and rich, and
afterwards whom his vanity and curiosity attracted. The heart of the
poor little actress which had remained naïve and romantic in spite of
his disenchanting existence, her true heart—which I had felt to be so
true, which had opened with such spontaneity in an hour of inward
suffering—was about to be broken, torn and crushed between two prides
fighting one against the other—and what prides they were!
This most ferocious and implacable of all prides, that of an almost
great lady and an almost great author, both gangrened with egoism by
their habitual display, was withered by their constant and detestable
study of the effect produced, without which a person does not retain the
world’s uncertain prestige. By frightfully certain intuition, I at once
measured the depth of the abyss in which my friend of the previous
evening unknown to herself was plunged. The extreme clearness of this
vision prevented me answering Jacques with indignation, as he no doubt
expected and was prepared to amuse himself at my simplicity. He would
have chaffed me, and that would have annoyed me. He would have told me
in words what his enigmatic smile expressed. “If she pleases you so
there is a place for you to take at once as her consoler.” I can give
myself the credit for not using that ugly expression. But I lay claim to
no other merit. Is there any merit in not profaning in oneself an image
which only pleases when it is tender and pure? Strange though it may
seem to apply this word to a girl whom I knew to be the mistress of one
of my comrades, I respected in Camille that foolish illusion by which
her twenty-two years risked on a single card their precious treasure of
delicate dreams, naïve tenderness and noble chimeras. I respected in her
the dream which she had already made me dream.
During that conversation last evening, the inmost depths of my
melancholy had trembled at the thought that had I met her a little
sooner, before she gave herself to Molan, understood and pleased her,
perhaps this unreasonable and touching child would have turned to me in
her need to take up with another artist those ancient and ridiculed
parts of muse and inspirer. What maker of beauty, however, has not
sighed for the presence near him of a charming woman’s mind, of a dear
and devoted face from which to drink in courage in times of lassitude,
of two weak but steady hands to clasp in his own weary ones, or a
faithful shoulder on which to rest his weary brow. It was enough to have
associated this sigh of regret for some minutes with the name of
Jacques’ mistress for the hope of a common and spiteful adventure with
this poor girl not to need dismissing. But the fact of my not nourishing
a dirty gallant project did not prevent my sympathy, which was already
unhealthy, growing during this talk with my comrade. That is why instead
of writing to Malvina the model, according to the wise plan formed a few
hours before, I followed my illogical visit of the morning by one still
more illogical in the afternoon, and that imprudent day terminated by a
third also foolish visit. An attack of irrationality was beginning. It
is not over yet as my pen trembled in my hand at recording Jacques’
brutal phrases. On the point of setting down the details of these two
other episodes which finished the prologue of this private tragedy, I
had to put down the pen. I had a pain in my memories, just as a person
suffers from a badly-closed wound. Nevertheless, by a contradiction
which I suffered without being able to explain, a charm arises from
these sorrowful souvenirs, a magic and an attraction.
The second visit I paid was, as can easily be guessed, to the poor Blue
Duchess herself, as I had begun to call her in my heart; and I forgot
the pedantic reminiscence which had inspired Jacques Molan with this
name, in making it convey the tender grace, and the fantastic melancholy
of one of Watteau’s dreams which are chimerical and caressing, ideal and
voluptuous. There was certainly no more difference between the
sentimentalism which this pretty child had ingenuously confessed to me
on the previous evening, and the practical materialism of her lover,
than between the sumptuous new house in the Place Delaborde and the
third floor in the modest Rue de la Barouillére where I rang about two
o’clock. The faded tints of the badly painted front harmonized with the
sordidness of the hall, and the glacial chill of the uncarpeted wooden
staircase, the dirty stairs of which sloped towards the street. An air
of shabby mediocrity extended over the old building, and the common
visiting cards nailed to the doors, at which I was curious enough to
look, revealed what sort of tenants dragged out their existence there.
These poor houses abound in the old streets near the Faubourg Saint
Germain, and as the highest rent is 1,200 francs they are the last haven
open to all the waifs of humble middle-class virtue. While I listened to
the bell and the sound of approaching footsteps all my impressions were
moved at this evidence of sentimental analogy which touched me still
more. I wished to discover in the fact that the already well-known
actress continued to live here a proof that she had not lied to me when
she spoke of her mother’s and her own peaceful life, an obvious sign of
a total absence of vanity and an indisputable evidence of her pride. If
she had ceased to be modest, she had not sold herself for luxury. She
had given herself to love and adoration. Alas! I was very quickly to
learn that the temptation for great Parisan elegance, too natural to a
fine young creature when she has known and lost it, still composed one
of the elements of the moral drama which was being enacted in her.
While these thoughts were in my mind the door opened. An old servant,
very simply dressed, after some hesitation told me she would see if the
ladies were at home and showed me into a little drawing-room. It was
full of furniture, too full in fact. If I had raised the covers from the
furniture I should have seen that the quality of the upholstery and the
gilded wood betokened former opulence. A beautiful tapestry covered one
of the walls. It had been necessary to double it up to adapt it to the
size of the room, the ceiling of which I could almost reach with my
cane. The grand piano, the great bronze clock, and the too lofty
candelabra had also come from a financier’s mansion. These mute
witnesses of vanished splendour told by their presence alone of the
melancholy of the ruin with more eloquence than any phrases could do.
Besides, I had scarcely time to meditate upon what Claude Larcher, in
his evil days of pedantry, had called the psychology of this furniture
before a woman of about fifty entered the drawing-room. I could see at a
glance that she was Camille’s mother.
Madam Favier at an interval of a quarter of a century resembled her
child with a similarity of features which became almost sad in its aging
and deformation. There is something very sorrowful in finding oneself
face to face with the anticipated spectre of a fine young beauty, whom
one admires and is beginning to love. Still the mother’s and daughter’s
expression were so different that the likeness was at once corrected.
Just as Camille’s blue eyes, with their pupils in turn very clear or
very dark, very animated and very languishing, revealed a passionate
inequality of soul, and profound troubles, so did the peaceful and
sluggish azure of Madam Favier’s eyes tell of passive serenity, resigned
acceptance, and above all happiness. This woman, the widow of the
stock-broker, whose life ended in a tragedy, was the image of internal
peace. Seeing her as I saw her, a little fat, with the fresh colour of
health in her full cheeks, and if not elegant at any rate very tasteful
in a dress which was almost fashionable, it was impossible at first to
imagine that this woman had endured the trials of a drama, of ruin and
suicide, and that this tranquil and irreproachable dowager was simply an
actress’ mother.
But we have changed all that, as my friend used to say. Did I myself
look like a painter who believed in the ancient traditions, or did my
comrades? Does the aspiring clubman, dressed like a tailor’s
fashionplate as Jacques Molan, look any more like Henry Murger’s
Bohemians? But do we not live in the days when a successful play brings
in an income for years equal to the capital and revenue of a farm in
Beauce, when the portrait of an American brings in 15,000, 20,000, or
30,000 francs, and when an associate of the Comédie Française draws the
salary of an Ambassador before retiring with the red ribbon in his
button-hole, while actresses on tour abroad are received at monarch’s
receptions. The barrier of prejudices or principles which separated the
artistic life from the world of society has been broken down, to the
applause of the democrats and progressives? The example of Jacques and
my studies have convinced me that it is on the contrary one of the worst
errors of the period. The artist has always gained by being treated
almost like an outcast. His natural taste for the brilliant, which is
the inevitable ransom of his powers of imagination, so soon turns to
vanity when it is the dupe of decorum, luxury and the praises of the
smart woman in particular, which is also a flattery irresistible to his
self-respect and senses! When he does not succumb to the temptation, he
goes to the other excess, quite as natural to this irritable class and
no less dangerous, that of revolted and misanthropic pride.
But I am falling into a great failing of mine, that of indefinite and
never-ending reverie. Let us go back to that which remains the true
corrective of all vices, intellectual and otherwise, “Reality.” So I was
sitting facing the respectable Madam Favier, in the drawing-room with
its covered up furniture, with a rather sheepish look at finding myself
with the mother when I had come to see the daughter. The widow, however,
soon reassured me as she entertained me with commonplace conversation
suitable to her appearance and birth. I have found out since that she
was the daughter of a small business man in the north, and had been
married for her beauty by the romantic father of the romantic Camille
after a chance meeting.
“Camille is coming directly,” she said to me. “The dressmaker is with
her trying a dress on. The poor child is not very well to-day. Her
profession, sir, is a very trying one, and she wants a rest already. We
were wrong not to go to the seaside this year. Do you know Yport, sir?
It is very pretty, and very quiet, but we have been there six summers. I
like, when I go into the country, to go to a familiar place. You are so
much better treated if you do, and feel more at home. When my dear
husband was alive we spent two months every year in Switzerland. We
always went on July 16 and came back on September 15. I have never been
there since, for it would bring sad memories back to my mind. Have you
come to talk to Camille about her portrait?”
“Has she spoken about it to you then? She has not forgotten?” I said.
“No, certainly not,” her mother answered, “and I was very pleased and
astonished when she told me, for it is very difficult to get her to sit
for her portrait. Did you think of showing Camille’s portrait at the
annual exhibition of pictures? It will be an excellent thing, I think,
for you, and not bad for her. We are waiting, before moving back to our
old neighbourhood where we have a few friends, till Camille has signed a
definite engagement. The Théâtre-Français has offered her one, but as
they let her go after she had won two prizes, she has been advised to
make them pay her a large salary now she is famous. I am willing for her
to do so; but I tell her that the house of Moliére is to the other
theatres what a great shop like the Louvre or the Bon Marché is to one
belonging to a small retailer.”
I am not quite sure I am reproducing these phrases in their right order.
But on looking at them I am very sure of their tenor, and more so still
of the mind which inspired them, as well as the phrases which followed.
Poor Madam Favier was so simple as to be sometimes almost common, and so
trusting as to be almost loquacious. Her mind was a very solid and
sensible one and that of a woman who had retained her good sense through
her ruin. This phenomenon is rarer even than sentiment in an actress.
Usually these sudden falls from the Olympus of opulence have as a result
a moral bewilderment which last for the rest of life. Ruined people seem
to lose with their money every faculty of adaptation to the narrow
circle of activity in which their social downfall imprisons them. It is
particularly so when their wealth has only been an episode between two
periods of poverty.
This alternation of situations is like a phantasmagoria in which
judgment is warped. To have withstood such a shock Madam Favier must
have been absolutely, as her youthful smile, her fresh cheeks, and the
harmonious lines of her face showed her to be, a simple creature
tranquil in her positivism, and quite the opposite of this girl whose
future she foresaw as she would have foreseen the future of a son who
had joined the army. Her steps from the Conservatoire to the Odéon,
Vaudeville and Comédie Française were fixed in this good woman’s mind
with a regularity which was the more astonishing because her education
had been such as to make her think of another type of destiny for a
woman. How had such a revolution been accomplished in her mind? Is it
necessary to explain that there are certain natures whose primordial
instinct is to model themselves on circumstances, just as the instinct
of others is to struggle and rebel against them? The latter case was
that of the poor Blue Duchess. This essential difference between their
two characters had prevented any real intimacy between the two women.
They had not and could not have real intercourse. I realized this only
too well when after ten minutes conversation with her mother, I saw
Camille enter with a pale face and eyes red from weeping, for her
trouble was so obvious, and yet her mother never even, suspected it!
“It is your turn to try on now, mother,” she said. “We will wait for
you. M. la Croix has a few minutes to spare us I am sure.” But when the
good lady had shut the door she said “Have you seen Jacques?”
“I called on him this morning,” I replied.
“Then you know that I am aware of everything?”
“I know you wrote to Fomberteau,” I replied evasively.
“You know, too, your friend’s answer, when I asked for an explanation of
his deception? He has sent you to find out for him what impression his
infamous note has produced upon me? Now, confess that is so, it will be
more straightforward.”
“Why do you judge me to be like that, mademoiselle?” I said, displaying
grief which she could see was sincere, for she looked at me in
astonishment, while even I was surprised at my own words: “You were more
just to me. You understand that sometimes silence is neither an
approbation nor a complicity. It is true that Jacques did not conceal
his sorry scheme nor his note from me. I did not hide from him what I
thought of his harshness, and if I come here it is of my own accord,
under the impulse of a sympathy which I admit I have no right to feel.
We have only been friends for twenty-four hours and yet I feel that
sympathy. You spoke to me with such a noble outpouring of the heart,
with such touching confidence that henceforth, I thought, we cannot be
strangers. I felt that you were unhappy and I came to you simply and
naturally. If it was an indiscretion you have thoroughly punished me for
it.”
“Forgive me,” she said in different tones with an altered look as she
stretched out her little burning hand to me. “I am suffering and that
makes me unjust. I, too, though I hardly know you, feel too keen a
sympathy for you to doubt yours. But this note from Jacques has wounded
me and he really has gone too far. He knows that I love him and he
thinks he can do as he pleases with me. He is mistaken. He does not know
where he is hurting me by playing with my heart in the way he is doing!”
“Do not be enraged at what is only a burst of anger in him,” I said,
full of apprehension. “You wrote to Fomberteau. For the moment Jacques
was wounded. He wrote most unkindly to you, but I am sure he regrets it
by this time.”
“He?” she cried with a nasty laugh. “If you are saying what you think,
you hardly know him. That which causes me the most pain, please
understand me, is not what he has done to me, though that makes me
suffer cruelly, it is what he pretends to himself to be from the idea I
had of him. I put him so high, so high! I saw in him a being apart from
others, some one rare, as rare as his talent! Yet I find him like the
lovers of all my theatre companions, the worst of their lovers, those
who have not even the courage of their infidelities and conceal them by
girlish untruths, those to whom the love given to them is nothing more
than vanity, a woman’s sentiment to be put in the button-hole like a
flower. But come, my passion blinds me no longer. That rends me, and he,
who is so intelligent, does not even suspect the nature of my suffering.
Don’t you think that I guessed that creature Madam de Bonnivet invited
him to supper last evening, or else to see her home, or worse still? We
know what fashionable women are when they once begin. We have about us
the same men as they do, and they tell us their stories. They are
sometimes haughty wretches; and Jacques accepted her invitation because
she has a house, horses, pictures, dresses by Worth, 50,000 franc
necklaces, and 30,000 franc furs. But I, too, some day when I like, will
have luxury since that is what pleases this great writer with the soul
of a snob. I have only to accept Tournade as my lover, the big fellow
with a face like a coachman whom you saw in my dressing-room, and I
shall have a house as good as Madam Bonnivet’s barrack, diamonds,
dresses by Worth, carriages and horses. I will have them, I will have
them, and he shall know it. He will be the man who has turned me into a
kept woman, a courtesan, and I will tell him so and shout it after him.
Do you think I dare not?”
“No, you will not dare,” I replied; “even to say it raises a feeling of
disgust in you.”
“No,” she replied in a dull voice, “you must not think me better than I
really am. There are days when that glittering life tempts me. I have
been rich, you see. Up to the age of twelve or thirteen I was surrounded
by all the luxuries it was possible for a father making 100,000 francs a
year on the Stock Exchange to give his only daughter. Ah well, at times
I miss that luxury. The mediocrity of this drab, vulgar and commonplace
existence disgusts and oppresses me. When I am waiting for a tram with a
waterproof and overshoes to save a cab fare of 35 sous, I sometimes get
impatient, and those tempting words, 'If you liked,’ come into my mind.
Ah! when I have a soul full of happiness, when I can think that I love
and am loved, that I am realizing and carrying out the romance of my
youth, that Jacques clings to me as I do to him, and that I shall remain
mingled in his life and work, then it is an intoxication to answer
myself: 'If I liked? But I do not like.’ I smile at my beloved poverty
because it is my beloved chimera. But when I have terrible evidence, as
I did to-day, that I am the dupe of a mirage, that this man has no more
heart than the wood of this furniture”—and she struck with her clenched
fist the table upon which she was leaning while she talked to me—“then I
make a different reply to the temptation. 'If I liked?’ I repeat and I
reply: 'It is true, and I am very foolish not to like!’ I shall not
always be so.”
“You will always be so,” I said as I took her hand again, “because this
foolishness simply consists in having what you believe Jacques has not,
I mean a heart. But then he has one of a sort,” I added, “and you will
be of that opinion this evening or to-morrow morning.”
“You do not know me,” she replied with a frown upon her pretty forehead
and a tremor of hatred around her fine mouth, which had become bitter
again. “He will have to humble himself and wait days and days for his
pardon. Yesterday you only saw me as the weak and amorous woman. There
is another side to my character, the bad side. You will find it out.
There is another characteristic, too, pride; but don’t be any the less
my friend,” she went on, introducing a subtle touch of melancholy into
her anger. The grace of this sudden change of front brought the shadow
of a sad smile to her face. She wiped away with her handkerchief two
large tears, and added with a shrug of the shoulders in a childish tone
which contrasted graciously, too, with the tragic discourse which had
just preceded it: “I hear mother coming back. I don’t want her to see
that I have been crying. As I am ashamed of lying to her, let us do so
thoroughly.”
What a conversation this was for a man to hear who, as I, since the
previous evening, had been invaded by the most passionate interests, and
by an emotion so keen that it was real love! During the hours of that
afternoon of confidences I could do nothing but ask myself: “Was she
sincere? Would it be possible for despair to make her take that horrible
course?” I could see in my mind that fat Tournade, and the gleam of the
eyes of that horrible being standing out from his red face. I discerned
now on reflection a will I had not realized on the previous evening,
that of the rich and patient rake who is weary of play and fastens
himself upon a particular woman. At the same time I could see Jacques
Molan as I had left him that morning, and his look when he had spoken of
his scheme for a rupture. But it was impossible that he could suspect
the responsibility he was incurring. I tried to demonstrate to myself
that there was more affectation than real perversity in his nature as a
literary man and that it was inoffensive. It is always childish for a
man to make such a parade of himself, even when, as in his case, it was
diplomatic and calculated. Was he not better than his attitudes and
paradoxes? Who knows? In telling him simply and frankly my impression of
the evil he could do this poor girl, should I not touch in him a chord
of remorse? There is, however, a sentimental honour, a probity, trivial
but strictly accurate, in affairs of the heart, as there is professional
honour and probity in money matters. How many people anarchists in
theory recognize in practice this pecuniary probity! They preach the
suppression of inheritance, and they would not rob you of a farthing in
a business transaction. Why had not Jacques too a fund of scruples and
probity in the presence of an obviously bad action to be committed or
not?
This reasoning resulted, after weighing the pros and cons, after
resolving to speak to him and then proving to myself the ridiculousness
of doing so, in my once more, about six o’clock, crossing the threshold
of his house in the Place Delaborde, only to discover that Molan was not
there. I went to dinner hoping to meet him as I had done the previous
evening; I did not do so. Seeing the impossibility of meeting him, I
wanted at least to have another talk with the woman who had been the
cause of my fruitless search, the seductive Camille Favier, whose frail
silhouette, blue eyes and emotional smile, pursued me with an obsession
much more irresistible than my pity justified. That was the pretext I
found as I made my way to the Vaudeville. I reached the theatre even
before the end of the first act. My weakness inflicted upon me a feeling
of shame, which made me hesitate about entering. I can see myself now
walking round the entrance, first of all looking at the staircase
leading to the theatre and then at the stage door in the Chaussée
d’Antin. At last I made up my mind to enter by the latter door, and as I
did so the audience were coming out in the interval. I ran up against
Jacques himself.
“Are you going to see Camille?” he asked with a heartiness through which
I discerned malice, and I believe I blushed as I replied—
“No, I am running after you.”
“You have come to plead her cause, I am sure,” he said as he took my
arm. “I know you had a talk with her this afternoon and even defended
me. I thank you, for it would have been quite legitimate for you to try
and profit by the situation. Only you are an honourable man. The cause
is won and we are so reconciled, your friend and I, that to-morrow she
is coming to visit me in my 'Abode of Love,’ as your friend Larcher
calls it.”
“What of Madam de Bonnivet?” I asked him, surprised at this unexpected
change of front.
“Madam de Bonnivet is nothing but a simpleton, a woman of the world in
all her horror. She kept the appointment at Pére Lachaise. She came
there with the intention of making me climb to the top of the yew trees
between which we walked. She played the coquette there more coldly than
in her own drawing-room. As I don’t like to be laughed at, we separated
after what was almost a quarrel.”
“So Camille benefits by the desire rejected by the other woman?” I
interrupted. “That is what is called a 'transfer’ in the money market.”
“No, not that,” he said as he shook his head. “A man’s heart is more
complicated than that. After seeing Madam de Bonnivet to her carriage,
for she had the audacity, or if you prefer it, the precaution, to come
to the rendezvous in her private carriage, I told her in English the
astonishing phrase Lord Herbert Bohun used to Madam Éthorel when he had
the audacity to make a declaration to her on his second visit, and which
is the finest example of insolence and fatuity I know! 'You know I
shan’t give you another chance.’ I raised my hat too tranquilly for the
fool to think I was sincere. But I was. I lit a cigar, reaching the
Boulevard on foot with a quickness which surprised even myself. I made
the discovery that not only I did not love this woman, but that she
really displeased me. With her a visit to my bachelor’s apartments, the
usual theatre of my pleasures, would have been a sport which flattered
my vanity without a doubt, but still an unpleasant job. She is, then,
quaint and pretentious. Then the image of the other one came into my
mind, and this infidelity which I had almost committed against her made
her seem adorable by comparison, so adorable that I at once went into a
café to write to my pretty Camille a letter of reconciliation. I would
have given my author’s fees for that evening for Queen Anne to have seen
me, for without a doubt she believed I was in some corner shedding the
tears of wounded love and humiliated vanity. That would be like me,
would it not?”
“Did Mademoiselle Favier answer your note?” I asked.
“A six-page letter which is a masterpiece, just like everything she
writes to me—five and a half pages to tell me she would never forgive
me, and the last half-page to forgive me. It is a classic! But where are
you going? I believe you were going to see her.”
“I repeat that I was looking for you,” I replied. “I have found you, but
what I had to tell you you have found out. You are doing her justice and
have done so to the other one. Your lover’s quarrel is over. You are
reconciled and happy. There is nothing left for me to do but bless you.”
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